As I made the final turn on my second last race ever as a high schooler to the finish line, I thought there was no way I could finish the race.  Then a familiar voice came ringing in my ear: “Kirky, you got to get going if you ever want to break 19:00.” A few moments later, I heard the same voice: “This is not time for a candy ass kick...you've got to be badass tough.”
And then I a voice in my head said, Coach is watching. If you don't have an amazing finish, things could get ugly.  And almost no time after he called me out, I was sprinting towards the finish line with the best time of my Cross Country career.
   This was just an average Saturday for Mr. Mulrooney, Arrowhead High School's boys Cross Country and Distance track coach. And he is no stranger to helping his runners achieve their maximum potential. 
After races Mr. Mulrooney talks to every one of his athletes, congratulating them if they had a good race and encouraging those who had a bad race. I swear he has a supercomputer for a brain because he always remembers your best race, what time you got, and where the race happened. This is one of the main reasons he was such a good coach. 
For my last high school cross country race, Coach and I both knew I wanted to go out on top.  But I went out and had a really bad race. Coach came up to me after and said, “Right now, don't think about the race. Think about the great career you've had.” This really helped me get over the tough race.
Coach was also encouraging even when he was not next to me.  Another good example of this would be the everyday runs. Because there would not always be a coach with all of the running groups it was hard for him to keep track of every group.  And so his solution was to assign leaders to each group and give every one of them a watch to keep track of their running pace.  And after the run, the leader would have to report out to coach and show him the pace.   And being one of those leaders, it was a terrifying moment going to show coach the watch, especially if it was too fast or too slow  But after the short meeting every thing would always be ok and I would realize that I had no reason to worry.
Another thing that Coach was good at was creating mantras.  It's been about six months since my last practice with Coach, but I can still envision him saying all of these mantras clearly. And he would always pull them out at the right time.  Like if anyone was goofing off in practice, he would shout, “Does practice make perfect?” And then the whole team would respond, “No, perfect practice makes perfect.”
So all in all Coach Mulrooney was a great coach who always gave it his best effort to support and help each one of his runners.  And I know that my cross country career and the career of many of my teammates would not have been the same without him.